The Galley Slave

Now I guess I should have taken a pic of the muscle queen muscle-bound non-dancer from Thunder Down Under, because nothing says galley slave like a sweaty, shirtless steroid case.

Of course, that's not the kind of galley I mean. I got the galley proof of
one of my novels from my publisher and I have to read through it for
mistakes.

I hate writing a synopsis. Blurbs are a little slice of hell. But galley reading? Dante's 6th,at least. You can't fix anything at this point but the little things
such as wrong words and those punctuation problems that appear out of
nowhere.

Does anyone else hate reading their own writing after a while? I've already read this thing about a zillion times, so one more shouldn't matter, but I'm dreading it. I have to act as if I've never read it and see what's actually on the page, not what I think I wrote. It's very slow going. It helps to read it aloud, but my voice is going to give out.

I'd love to hand this over to someone else to do, but only the author can proof a galley. Too bad. I could use a set of real galley slaves, and a golden barge so I could spend my days sailing the mighty Los Angeles River instead of, you know,
working.